Award-winning museum exhibition – Touchstones Rochdale

Big Wave Media’s wide client base leads to some interesting and varied projects. In these case studies we look at some of the recent work commissioned and explore how the final result was achieved…

Award-winning museum exhibition – Touchstones Rochdale
Link4Life is the Cultural Trust operating in the Borough of Rochdale. The Trust has been a Big Solution customer since January 07 and the relationship between Big Wave Media and the Trust has led to some inspiring, and as we’ll see, award-winning work.

The Requirements

Link4Life’s Museum Officer, David Pugh approached Big Wave Media to build the framework for an exhibition entitled; ‘The Fight To End Slavery: a local story’. This unique exhibition installed at Touchstones Rochdale Museum, examined the ensuing struggle to end slavery in North America and Rochdale’s remarkable role in this story.

The exhibition showcased objects from the museum, gallery and archive collections and required designs and materials to present the story. The venue consisted of seven walls, some as large as six metres wide.

The Process

An initial meeting was scheduled between a Big Wave Media designer and David Pugh’s team on site at the Touchstone Rochdale Museum. To understand the aims of the exhibition the slavery trade was explored along with the flow of the exhibition, styles and sizes. During this time two initial walls were drafted to establish the style throughout.

A variety of effects were used to produce the final designs ranging from the creation of sepia tones on images to transparency and advance cloning techniques for extending images.

The Finishing

Big Wave’s extensive print knowledge led to the creation of stunning finished displays. Specialist materials were used and a unique blue black paper was then pasted and hung to produce custom wallpapered walls!

The Result

The exhibition was very well received, beautifully planned and fully brought to life. The exhibition went on to win a prestigious award for "Outstanding Contribution to Black Heritage" for the North West region by the Black History Foundation. The awards ceremony took place at the UK’s first Black Heritage Fair, held in Birmingham, December 2007.

“We have worked with Big Wave Media on the graphics for our last two museum exhibitions and I have been very imprested with their design work and professional approach in responding to our demanding requirements.”

David Pugh, Museum Officer

Why not keep an eye out for Touchstones next exhibition, which has also received the Big Wave media treatment ,‘Life in the 70’s’, due to open in February - it’s sure to bring back a few memories!!

The Borough of Rochdale is located to the north-east of the City of Manchester and straddles the trans-pennine M62.